College Discourse Over Food Safety, Courtesy of Bainbridge Lawyer

Aug 29 2009

Bill Marler considers himself a “Coug —
through and through.”

The Bainbridge Island resident earned three
degrees at Washington State University, was the first student elected to the
Pullman City Council and served on the WSU board of regents after making a
worldwide name for himself battling E. coli outbreaks as a food safety lawyer.

So when his alma mater announced budget
constraints would force it to cancel this year’s freshman reading program,
which was to focus on a controversial food-related topic, Marler’s Cougar pride
got the better of him — and his checkbook.

“They had already bought 4,000 copies of the
book, so I’m just covering the rest,” he said.

The rest happens to be about $50,000.

But it’s worth it, Marler said, because the
money revives WSU’s Common Reading program and puts copies of its 2009
selection — Michael Pollan’s biting critique of industrial agriculture, “The
Omnivore’s Dilemma” — into the hands of every freshman entering a university
known for producing the best minds in agribusiness.

Along with the book comes a year’s worth of
discussions and events, as well as a visit from the author in January. Marler
is also bringing Pollan home with him for mid-January appearances on Bainbridge
Island.

“The book has become for food what ‘Silent
Spring’ was for DDT, and what ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was for global warming,”
Marler said. “It’s helping people focus their attention on what’s happening to
them, and how things need to change.”

“The Omnivore’s Dilemma” pulls apart four
meals, inspecting the ingredients’ social, political and environmental
implications. The conclusion: people should eat food that is more a product of
nature than industry.

A best-seller in 2006, the book was quickly
adopted as a manifesto for the modern local food movement.

WSU’s selection of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”
touched a nerve with some university leaders and key financial contributors —
many of whom operate the kind of large-scale farming operations Pollan targets
in the book.

The school stirred up even more controversy
when it unceremoniously dropped the program in May.

A WSU English professor and Common Reading
selection committee member asserted in a widely dispersed e-mail message that
the program was canceled because of “political pressure” from a large farm
owner and university regent who disliked the book’s characterization of
industrial farming.

WSU President Elson Floyd dismissed the
controversy as rumor-fueled, and stressed that the program was cut as part of a
larger effort to shore up the university’s $54 million budget deficit.

Marler, who was a WSU regent from 1998 to
2004, was quick to come to WSU’s defense.

“To show that it was not political, I will pay
to get Mr. Pollan to Pullman and find a place for him to speak,” he wrote in
his blog, marlerblog.com, in May. I have my checkbook ready.”

WSU’s prompt acceptance of the $50,000 offer
proved to Marler that the university’s concerns were purely budgetary.

“It was not politically motivated, but it was
handled badly,” he said. “They didn’t see this as the potential pie in the face
it became.”

For Marler, bringing back the program was a
way for WSU to save face and ensure that the book got a fair hearing on campus.

“I may not agree with all of (Pollan’s) ideas,
but I think they need to be talked about,” he said.

The main thrust of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” —
that large-scale food production and distribution are harming human and
environmental health — fits with what Marler has learned though almost two
decades of helping sick people sue corporations over tainted food.

Marler began specializing in food
contamination cases in 1993 when he represented a seriously ill survivor of
Jack in the Box’s headline-grabbing E. coli outbreak. The $15.7 million
settlement set a Washington state personal injury settlement record and led to
several other cases against the fast food chain.

In 1998, Marler pulled $12 million out of
Odwalla on behalf of three children made ill from the company’s E. coli-tainted
apple juice.

Marler now travels several days a month to
speak to food industry and public health groups. In May, he addressed Britain’s
House of Lords. This week, he’s slated to speak at a food safety conference in
Beijing.

He still handles a full plate of cases. One of
his current clients is a 4-year-old girl who suffered a stroke from
contaminated cookie dough.

“In my 17 years of litigation, I’ve never sued
a farmers market,” he said. “It’s always been big corporations operating in
multiple states, poisoning multiple people. That’s not to say that no one has
ever gotten poisoned at the Bainbridge farmers market, but it hasn’t been
serious. There is a link between mass-produced food and mass-produced illness.”

Where Marler questions Pollan is on how
small-scale farming and localized distribution can feed the world’s growing
population.

“I grew up on a farm near Silverdale, so I’m
very familiar with small farms and raising animals,” he said. “How do you
translate that to where you’re feeding 9 billion people?”

Marler hopes a flood of other questions about
the ills of agribusiness and limitations of the local food movement will begin
flowing as thousands of fellow Cougs crack open “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” as
classes get under way.

“It’s a book perfectly suited for (WSU) to
grapple with,” he said. “I can’t think of a better place to talk about this,
and start dealing with these issues in a big way.”